Demands

by

A.
G. C.

“What do
you want, my children? Jobs? Regional autonomy? A pay raise? The vote at the
age of 15? Retirement at the age of 45? Equality of the sexes? Keep on asking
in order and all of your complaints will be properly treated with the due
form.”

Every
favor that the master grants consolidates him, since he is the Master. But the
fact is that the subjects get what they want. What they want? Yes, and along
the way, they learn to want what they are ordered to want.

Do I ask
the Master leave to fall in love with my aunt? My dear man, the ideas you have!
One doesn’t ask this of the Master.

Why? It is
premature; a Ministry of Erotic Relations has not been created. But will one be
created? Without a doubt, and then you will be able to demand the right to fall
in love with whoever you desire. For now, be patient; and tell me, meanwhile,
why not demand the right to freely import Australian cars? It is not shameful
to have a desire for an Australian car (since it is your right to desire it).
Isn’t one the owner of one’s desires? Why does one want the money one earns if
one cannot spend it on what one desires? Isn’t it intolerable that the Ministry
of Finance and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs place so many obstacles in your
way that you can’t act on your own? Come on! Let’s unite – all the partisans
for the free importation of cars – and make our demand. Petitions! Strikes!
Demonstrations in the streets! Presentations of bills by our representatives in
the Chambers! Let’s demand! Good, but it is necessary to recognize that the
matter of jobs, of autonomy, of votes, of wages, of pensions, or that of the
equality of rights between the sexes, is more important and serious than
Australian cars. You mean that these demands are nearer to the desires of
people than Australian cars or amorous relations with my aunt?

It is
necessary for us to reflect. What relationship is there between the creation of
jobs and the desire not to work? What relationship is there between earlier
retirement, the four day week, 33 days a year of vacation, and the desire not
to have a schedule whether it’s Saturday or Monday so that one can pass night
freely as the moon turns around us or go gather blackberries whenever your
friends and the blackberries ask it of you? What relationship is there between
regional (or, pardon, national or whatever one wants to call it) and the desire
of people not to have to obey decisions originating from above or not to
tolerate taxes the purpose of which the don’t know and organizations the use of
which they don’t understand? How does such autonomy, granted or to be granted,
approach the desire of individuals to reach an agreement between those of the
countryside and those of the city and its surroundings in all the circumstances
that commonly present themselves? What relationship is there between the vote
for adolescents and the desire never to become an adult? What relationship is
there between the right of women to occupy the positions of men and the desire
that the domination of men ceases? Between the right of a woman to have the
children she wants, with who and when she wants and the urgent desire that more
future car buyers are not born every year?

Finally,
one can devote oneself to having nothing to do with this; but it is necessary
to be realistic, my friend, and certainly these demands are a step forward,
toward more advanced goals in the direction of these latter aims you speak
about so naively. Autonomy, just like the nationalization of enterprises, moves
toward the goal of an authentic liberation of Capital and the State. The vote
for adolescents is a means by which to impose laws that are less and less
dictated by the criteria of adults and are more and more youthful. Pay raises
are of use to workers and to employees at least until there’s a new raise in
prices and a new demand, because they feel that they are more their own master
and find themselves in a better position to impose their class interests on the
bodies that exploit them. The four-day work week and the seven-hour work day
represent a step forward toward the progressive liberation from forced labor
and for enjoying one’s free time. The equality of women in society and at work
is a step… for the things they desire.

Yes,… If
today some still continue to believe that things function in this way, if they
don’t perceive the quality of the positive outcome of demands, if they don’t
understand one bit how the apparatus functions and that the demands that
succeed are always revealed to be a swindle, as well as a renewal and
reinforcement of the powers that be, then it means that one must have studied
realism at the Polytechnic Institute of Colorful Dreams.

Oh,
demands! Words have their destiny. This well-known legal term is already
ill-omened. The Latin word for “demand” is a legal term, rei vindicatio*[literally “king’s protection or vengeance]:
a claim of something one considers as one’s property. I imagine that this is
what the swindle has been based on. It seems that initially the operation
worked like this: the one who demanded the right to something – a piece of
land, for example – together with another who made a counter-claim presented
themselves before a magistrate or judge and set to work on the matter in
question – a clump of disputed earth for example – so that, being informed by
the arguments of both claimants, each claiming to own the right to the thing,
the judge would make a decision and grant it to one or to the other. It is
clear that, in time, in this triangle formed by two rivals and a representative
of the law with the miserable thing at the center, the relations between terms
are changed in a significant way. In fact, whereas in this original scheme, the
hands of the claimants were directed toward the thing, and whereas the
authority appeared to remain above and outside the conflict – as an impartial
witness and a above all judge between the hands for disposing of the thing in
the just position (to the one side, or to the other side, or, like Solomon,
right down the middle of the thing)—, today, due to demands among other things
the plot has advanced to such a point that the hands, both of them, all of
them, are directed toward the heights, toward the summit on which the judge
stands, while from below, they ask for the concession or the free distribution
of the thing demanded; which, consequently – and this is obvious, has become,
first of all, the property of the judge who can thus, yielding to requests and
pressure, hand it over to those whose claims he considers to be just.

There is
no need to dwell on the fact that this process has constituted and still
constitutes a way of guaranteeing and strengthening power. But then in the
meantime such a process could not be carried to its end without an accompanying
change of the thing itself. In the original shema, this might still be a bit of
earth, maybe a slave, in short, a thing with obvious utility and use value for
those who lay claim to it. But when the things have become concessions from the
Master, have further more become abstract rights, amounts of time and money,
arrangements for the future improvement of working conditions or the legal
position of the claimant and, at the extreme point of the bureaucratic progress
of the State and the corporation, a change in the editing of a paragraph of
regulation, the creation of a new department for the administration of
satisfied demands, the appearance of a few initials such as “Smug 3-m-25” the
importance of which the claimants still don’t understand, and their official
representatives or the experts on the subject are there to pretend that they,
yes, they are able to understand.

And
another transformation accompanies the one around the claimants. To the extent
that they grow accustomed to modifying their cries in accordance with the
initials and numbers that the social order imposes on them, they present their
claim in the language of order, in a way that this order can understand their
demand and act in consequence; at they same time, they cannot avoid becoming
convinced little by little on their own that this was really what they desired
– cars within everyone’s reach, 33 vacation days a year, retirement at 45,
color television, a confirmed minimum wage, a clean niche in a protected
apartment block, equality of rights, a democratic constitution, horizontal
labor unions and two hundred miles of highway – ; so that in the end their
desires com to coincide with the development projects of the state and
business. And these fine people, by whom it is presumed that the desire for
things and the capacity of enjoying them come, only constitute a small domestic
motor that, while it continues to produce work, produces the petitions which
power and money need in order to change and continue to perpetuate themselves.

But, oh! My heart, stop reasoning and limit
yourself to proposing to your comrades in suffering the following cry:
“Citizens, don’t make demands!” Lets demand no more. Let’s leave them to do
their best on their own to organize themselves and us (to the extent to which
we leave things be), and to advance towards the end that governs all their
functions, towards death. Undoubtedly, they will continue to much harm to
people, but still less than they would have done if we, the ones below, were to
collaborate through our demands. Of course! And in the meantime, every one
considers the rights that seem good to them, and so as not to demand and not to
make a claim to the Master that this is justice, everyone takes the thing
directly in hand. But, old chap, where are you trying to get to? Anarchy? Chaos?
Don’t choke yourself, comrade. I’ll talk to you about chaos another day.

*Unfortunately,
a literal translation was not possible for this passage. In Italian, the word
for a demand is “rivendicazione” which comes directly from this Latin
term. The English “demand” comes from a Latin base as well: de + mandare,
which apparently means “to entrust to” , and so is, in its own way, equally
ill-omened for those of us seeking to determine our lives on our own terms.